The journal told Lewis to wait for Josie before reading the next entry. He sat back on the pink sleeping bag, wishing he had a book to read or something else to do to pass the time. Fueled by boredom, he eventually got up and wandered the dilapidated house using a lantern Josie brought over the night before to light his way. He avoided the basement—he still felt anxious about going down there ever since being locked in—but he explored the rest of the rooms. There wasn’t much to find apart from some empty beer bottles strewn about the gutted kitchen and an old rubber racquetball in the dining room that appeared to have been the cause of the broken window he was using as his entry point.
He took the ball upstairs to the master bedroom and made a game out of bouncing it against the floor and wall and trying to catch it again while sitting in the center of the room. After about an hour of this, he laid out flat on the ground and threw the ball straight up, trying to see how close he could get it to bounce near his head without flinching or accidentally hitting himself in the face.
He managed to hit himself in the face a lot.
When he grew bored of that, he went back downstairs to the kitchen, retrieved all the empty beer bottles, and then set them up like bowling pins at the bottom of the L-shaped staircase. Three hours later, he was completely exhausted from going up and down the stairs over and over again to retrieve the ball, but he’d also worked out the exact spot to throw the ball in order to make all of the bottles fall over.
It was getting late. Josie still hadn’t come by. Lewis couldn’t stand all the waiting. He made himself a peanut butter sandwich from the supplies given to him by Mr. Mays, and then passed out on top of the sleeping bag.
His dreams were tumultuous. Walking through a foggy field, the sky shimmered like the Beyond. An invisible webbing suddenly snagged hold of his leg. Out of the mist a giant spider descended, furiously clicking its massive fangs. As the spider drew near, Lewis’s fear turned to confusion—it had three heads where the spider’s eyes should have sat. The faces of Mr. Gray, Adeona, and Orcus stared back at him. “Hello, Lewis,” they said.
The spider’s legs worked like a seamstress, spinning him in endless circles as it wrapped him tightly with thick webbing. He couldn’t breathe. The pressure in his chest grew, along with his panic, until he awoke gasping for air.
There really was something on his chest. Before Lewis even remembered where he was, he flailed around, batting at the figure poised on top of him. It stepped off with a slow trod, yellow eyes reflecting back at him with the light of the streetlight outside. Lewis struggled to turn the lantern back on as terror flooded his mind. The creature stared back at him unblinking as Lewis’s hands felt around blindly for the dial that would ignite the lantern’s flame.
The butane in the lantern hissed as he finally found the dial and turned it on. Flat light flooded the bedroom, briefly blinding his unaccustomed eyes.
“Meerrrroooww,” complained Melon.
Josie chuckled halfheartedly from across the room.
Lewis’s focus shifted around in confusion. Josie was seated in a blue camping chair on the opposite side of the room, an off-brand can of flavored water in her hand. Melon stood beside her now, tale flicking back and forth. The cat should have been at the motel with his family.
“Mr. Gray stopped by and dropped him off,” said Josie, answering the unasked question. “I guess he’s been ferrying as many animals as he can through the Beyond and back again to this time to confuse the Agares when they don’t freeze. Birds and squirrels and such…. You’ve been sleeping like a rock.” She seemed to be in higher spirits than Lewis had expected. She stood up, leaving her can in the chair’s cup holder as she walked over to join Lewis on the sleeping bag.
“Are you… how are you doing?” asked Lewis.
“Fine,” said Josie as she sat down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Melon followed Josie over and sat beside her on the corner of the sleeping bag. He began purring instantly as she mindlessly scratched under his chin.
Even sitting right next to him, Josie felt distant. Her eyes remained unfocused, never looking at anything in particular. The whole situation just felt off to Lewis. Josie was struggling, and for good reason.
“I’m really sorry,” said Lewis. “It’s so terrible….”
Josie’s expression stayed blank as she peeked up at him slowly. The words didn’t seem to have registered with her. “What’s the next task?” she asked.
Lewis rubbed the sleep from his eyes before retrieving the leather journal from atop the bag of supplies. “Donno,” he said. “Had to wait for you.”
“Well, I’m here,” she said coldly.
Lewis sighed. He flipped open the pages to the spot he’d left off.
“Entry #6: Hey guys, this is your last step for a while. This will be confusing for you, but you need to put this journal into a time pocket in Yost Park. It will be delivered back to you eventually. Until that time, your only task is to stay alive. Do not read ahead. Just go to Yost right now. Both of you. Mr. Gray will be there to show you the way to the time pocket after you arrive.”
Lewis narrowed his eyes. He glanced up at Josie. Her lips were pursed.
“Why do I even need to be here?” she asked. “This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
Lewis flipped to the next page. “Hi Landon,” the journal continued. “Your first task is simple. Go to the cubby where we put our backpacks and find mine. Pour a cup of water into my backpack when no one’s looking so that it gets all over my binder and papers. Make it a habit to do this every week or so. And Lewis, I knew you’d be too curious to not read this, but seriously stop now.”
He snapped the journal shut, perplexed.
Landon….
The last time he’d had a backpack in a cubby hole was in elementary school. There was a stint in the third grade when he’d often found his belongings soaking wet. He’d never known how it was happening, and it had taken quite a toll on his emotional health at the time.
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Seeing instructions from himself to a young Landon, his tormentor, was beyond disturbing. He glanced up at Josie. She looked just as confused.
“What does he have to do with any of this?” she asked.
“I have no idea…” said Lewis. He gave Melon a rub on the head as he stood up to leave. Josie followed behind him as he hurried down the stairs and out the broken dining room window. Josie’s bicycle was propped up against the side of the house. Lewis ran around the back to retrieve his own. He had endless questions for Mr. Gray.
They set off for Yost Park. The moon was nearly full, sitting high in the dark sky as they pedaled down the street side by side.
“What’s a time pocket?” asked Josie after rounding the first corner.
“I got the journal out of one. Mr. Gray said it’s like an eddy in the river of time. If you put something inside, you can retrieve it in the future or in the past, I guess.”
“Hmm,” said Josie. “If you crawled inside one, when would you come out?”
Lewis didn’t know the answer, but Josie hadn’t really been expecting one. They rode on in quiet contemplation until they reached the main entrance to the park. The journal hadn’t mentioned where exactly in Yost they were supposed to meet Mr. Gray, so they meandered about for several minutes until a passing car prompted them to ride down the main drive to get out of sight. The park was closed at this hour, so it was best not to be seen. They dismounted and walked their bikes off to the side into the brush in case anyone else happened by.
Yost was a sizable park by Edmonds standards. Tall trees and thick underbrush laced with trails stretched about half a mile into the darkness. There was a pool facility at the end of the drive, but the trails seemed a more likely place for a time pocket than the popular pool.
Josie used her phone to light the way as they walked towards the nearest trailhead. They didn’t really have any idea where they were supposed to go. They just wandered aimlessly.
It was a chilly night, possibly due to the Agares if Josie’s earlier summation was correct. She walked with her arms crossed beneath her breasts; her phone clutched tight in her fingers and pointed down to light the path.
Lewis stepped gingerly beside her, avoiding roots and divots. He could feel the tension of unspoken words growing as they moved deeper into the trees. Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer. “There was nothing else you could have done,” he said. “It wasn’t fair.”
Josie’s hair blew around her face as a gust of cold wind blew through the foliage. She hugged herself tighter and quickened her pace.
Lewis matched her stride, not giving up. “You aren’t responsible for their deaths. The only thing you are responsible for is giving everyone else a chance to survive the Agares.”
Josie scoffed. “Do you want to know what I think?” She didn’t wait for Lewis to respond. “I think I could have chosen to save them and lived the life I was born into and everyone else could have lived their lives too and who cares if the Agares take all the energy in the end? What’s the difference between stopping existing and death? We all live, and we all die.”
“Being erased—” Lewis started.
“—Death is inevitable. We are fretting over time ending, but we are creatures of time. The Parcae treat us like some mural painted on a wall. To them, all of human existence has already happened—it must have already happened if we can go back to any point in time. Why should the mural care if it gets torn down? I could have lived my life to the fullest with my parents and one day died and never would have known anything about the universe ending or cared about it in the slightest. One day the sun will blow up and humanity will cease to exist, so what are we trying to save? Existing and then not existing is the nature of life. The only difference is now, because of my choice, my parents are dead, prematurely, and they didn’t get to live the life they were meant to have. And what do I get from their sacrifice? To move across the country so I could meet you? Would you let your parents die just so you could meet me?”
Lewis didn’t know what to say. Josie stared back at him searchingly. It was a lot to take in. What she said made a lot of sense. The Parcae cared about humanity’s continued existence because to them Earth was a place they could visit from outside of time. Humans throughout history had already lived out their lives. All future people had lived theirs as well, when viewed from the Beyond anyway. If the Agares snipped the universe, from humanity’s perspective, ceasing to exist wouldn’t diminish the value of the lives lived. Or would it? The whole thing was overwhelmingly philosophical.
There was one thing Josie hadn’t taken into account, though. “Do you know who Mr. Bradley is?” he asked.
Josie shook her head.
“That’s because the Agares erased him by accident yesterday when they came for me.”
Josie stopped walking and turned to face him.
“I remember him because I was already outside of my original time stream by then. I don’t know if he had a family, but if he did, they probably have empty holes in their lives they can’t explain. The Agares have to be stopped and we are the only ones who might have a chance of stopping them. Did time freeze for you during last period today?”
Josie nodded meekly, her eyebrows lowering into a frown. “I stood still, like the journal said, but nothing happened, and then everything started moving again after a bit.”
“That was the Agares, trying to find us again. They keep coming here, now, looking for us, and they won’t stop until we don’t exist anymore.” He paused briefly to let the words sink in. “If you hadn’t allowed Adeona to do what she needed to do, they would have found you years ago and ripped you right out of your parents’ minds. Who’s to say they wouldn’t have erased your whole family at the same time?”
Josie’s eyes stayed locked on his.
“I feel something when I’m around you,” said Lewis, “something strange and exhilarating. You talk about the life you were meant to have—what you were born into—but I don’t think either one of us really knows exactly what that even means. We were both born Chosen. I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse, but we are the only ones who can choose our own destinies.”
Josie breathed heavily, the focus of her eyes flicking back and forth between his own.
“I think we were destined to meet,” he continued. “I want to know you. I want to live a life free from the Agares. But the only way that’s going to happen is if we make it happen.” He reached his hand up and brushed some of Josie’s disheveled hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “We’ll get through this together.”
Josie’s expression didn’t change, but she moved forward, burying her face into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, clasping her in a tight hug. Before she pulled away he kissed her on the forehead.
Behind Josie from within a square of deadened air about fifteen crows burst through a portal and into the park, cawing up a storm. Mr. Gray came through behind them shaking a leafy branch, his lips curled down in a tiny frown. “I could only get about half of them to fly back through from the Beyond,” he said. Three more crows darted past his head, exiting the portal on their own. Mr. Gray groaned in annoyance as the window disintegrated.
Lewis didn’t waste any time. “Why am I writing to Landon in the journal?” he asked, accusatorially.
Mr. Gray shook his branch at Lewis. “You know I can’t tell you things about your fate,” he said. “And besides, that journal is your business. I never told you to write it.”
So Landon has something to do with my fate….
He knew that was as much of a hint as he was going to get from Mr. Gray.
“The pocket is over there,” said Mr. Gray, pointing with his branch at a nearby tree.
Josie shined her light to where Mr. Gray was pointing. A root at the base of a tree poked up above the earth a couple of inches.
Mr. Gray ambled over to the spot and cleared away some moss. “Just shove it in,” he said.
Lewis shrugged to himself. He knelt down beside the root and slipped the journal across the invisible barrier. Josie squatted beside him, inspecting the pocket. A trail of tiny ants had formed a procession, heading into the anomaly. They didn’t appear to be coming back out again. Josie stuck her hand in, musing over her fingers vanishing and reappearing as she moved them in and out.
Without the journal, they would have to rely on Mr. Gray alone for guidance.
“Bye,” said Mr. Gray. He opened a new portal and was gone in a blink of an eye.